BuzzFeed hires Craig Silverman as Founding Editor for Canadian newsroom

New York-based BuzzFeed, the incredibly popular site that’s built off top-10 lists and viral news, recently announced plans it will open an office in Canada. Keith Hernandez, BuzzFeed’s VP of Global Revenue, stated in March that its first editorial newsroom will arrive in Toronto sometime “this spring.”

Today, news broke that Craig Silverman, author of “Mafiaboy” and “Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech,” will be the country manager and lead reporters in Toronto and Ottawa.

Silverman noted in an interview with the Globe that the Canadian coverage will focus on creating content about topics that are blowing up online. “We won’t be looking at what happened today in Parliament. At times we’ll be satirical, humour-driven, personality-driven, and I think that’s a different thing that doesn’t exist today,” said Silverman. “We’re going to start publishing things and we’re going to look very closely about how it performs.”

Canada will be BuzzFeed’s seventh international territory with other locations in the United States, Britain, France, Brazil, India, Germany and Mexico. BuzzFeed has about 900 employees and sees over 200 million monthly unique views.